956 101 
Bulgaria had an exciting weekend. Not only they humiliated the Dutch in a football world cup qualification match with 2-0 but last Sunday the advanced Bulgarian parliament elections came to a result. The GERB, conservative and pro-EU, won the elections. Not that surprisingly but still delicate because their leader Borisov resigned as PM after the loss of his candidate Tacheva to socialist and Russia focused Radev in the presidential elections in November last year.
However, GERB only won about a third of parliament seats so a (probably long) coalition negotiation is on its way. But, like most Bulgarians, even Borisov has a weak spot for Russia and Putin so maybe that will drive coalition success together with Ninova of the BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party).
Deal maker or breaker could be Karadya of the MDL (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) representing the 700.000 Turkish minority. In a only 7 MIO population country this is something to take care about. The Ottoman sword of Erdogan as a neighbour reaches most definitely into EU borders here.
I was priviledged to drive through the Bulgarian inlands recently and was struck by its beauty but by its torn apart nature as well. Completely abandoned villages where older people moved to big cities like Sofia and the younger even left the country were interspersed with flowering EU sponsored towns looking to the future in good spirits. This country really deserves some good leadership and some help to flower again as it did centuries ago.
Election season is not over. Vote with your mind, heart and soul (in that order :)))
(many thanks to the great cartoons of STASKL)
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Last Saturday the relationship between the Netherlands and Turkey escalated. Turkish ministers wanted to campaign in the Netherlands about the coming referendum giving Erdogan more power. Not only like many others the Dutch government believes this is a step back in democratic development, but didn’t want violent uproars like happened many times earlier with minority groups with a Turkish background at specific Turkish political gatherings. The Dutch PM kindly asked the Turks to stay away or keep it neat and on a small scale. The Turks immediately started to insult and threat and after various attempts to come to an agreement, the Dutch PM decided that “this kind of verbal aggression was not acceptable anymore” and as a consequence to withdraw the right to land an airplane with Turkish ministers. Of course more insults and threats and moreover another Turkish minister entered the Netherlands by car with several decoy convoys to mislead the Dutch police. Meanwhile the Turkish consul lied to the Dutch government about what he knew and his communication to the people. The Turkish minister was stopped 30 meters before the Turkish consulate and after hours of negotiations escorted back to Germany as persona non grata. As expected the Turkish demonstrants misbehaved and after a violent night 14 people were arrested en 7 were injured one policeman included. Not surpisinglyTurkey responded with more insults and threats.
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